Inspiring innovations from New Zealand

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, latest member of The  Technopolicy Network, likes to share her latest video on  New Zealand's inspiring innovations with you: from jetpacks to robotic fruit pickers!

New Service for Members

The Technopolicy Network has created a new Matchmaking Service for all attendees of our Annual Conference, 26^th -28^th in Tampere, Finland.

Our Finnish partners will cooperate with us in finding suitable partners for international cooperation and partnerships upon your requests. Please contact the Technopolicy Team with your specific requests and we will facilitate your fruitful meetings.

News from Auckland,New Zealand!

This year New Zealand celebrates 10 years of successful technology incubation. Quite an achievement for a country such as New Zealand. Over the last decade a world class industry has evolved, backed strongly by the government through its economic development agency New Zealand Trade and Enterprise – the Technopolicy Network’s newest member.

Through a global network of offices, NZTE works to connect international businesses and investors with New Zealand business opportunities. The agency also provides funding and advisory support to a network of eight incubators, well spread geographically throughout New Zealand in its main cities and regional centres.

The international reputation of the New Zealand incubation industry is reflected in the accolades earned by Auckland based The ICEHOUSE which was rated by Forbes Magazine as one of the world’s top 10 technology incubators in 2010, and PowerHouse Ventures in Christchurch which earlier this year was awarded the 2011 NBIA Incubation Innovation of the Year and in 2009 was named the Asian Incubator of the Year.  It is global recognition like this that has firmly placed New Zealand on the incubation map.

The strength of New Zealand’s incubators are their broad community support, their affiliations with universities around the country,their highly committed angel investment networks and most of all their experienced, entrepreneurially-focused management teams, combined with a high level of innovation and great emerging technologies.

The challenge for New Zealand as a geographically remote country with a small population is to increase its trade with the rest of the world and to develop technology based industries to match the global reputation of its primary industries. For its incubators, the challenge is to build their international relationships and produce “born global” technology companies – and so far they are doing quite well with their top 100 graduate companies generating an economic impact estimated at more than US$400 million in 2010.

To coincide with its 10 year celebrations, New Zealand will host the Technopolicy Network’s 10^th Science Based Incubation Conference in November. New Zealand’s incubation reputation, an exciting conference programme and the beauty of New Zealand as a visitor destination are sure to attract delegates from all around the world. For more information about the conference visit www.technopolicy.net/SBI

Richard White - New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

New Member: New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

We are proud to announce our new institutional member: New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the national economic development agency of New Zealand.

The NZTE and a number of affiliated New Zealand incubators will join The Technopolicy Network and together with Incubators New Zealand will organize the 10th Annual Conference on Science Incubation with us. We warmly welcome our new members and look forward to a fruitful cooperation!

Finnish Delegation visits The Technopolicy Network

On the 31st of May, a delegation from Finland visited The Technopolicy Network in The Hague for an inspiring workshop. The workshop commenced with a combined effort of The Technopolicy Network,  Frank Zwetsloot and Juliette Bonarius in providing an overview of the characteristics and the aims of The Network.

Nicolas van Geelen (Coordinator strategy and cluster policy at the Province of South-Holland) followed by explaining the importance of clusters as geographical concentrations of companies, specialized suppliers and academic institutions that have both a competitive and cooperative relationship.  The  South-Holland Province and Leiden Bio Science Park in particular were used as one of the prime examples of  a successful cluster approach by a province.

Wilbert Hoondert (Manager of Economic Development and City Marketing  for the city of Delft) completed the picture with a presentation of  the Delft perspective on innovation and collaboration in the region. He focused on the collaboration of the three (complementary) universities (comparable to the Altoo University), and the economic agenda as part of the promotion of this region as the  European innovation region Tridelta.

After every presentation there was an opportunity to ask questions and give comments, giving rise to some interesting discussions regarding Finland’s cluster approach versus the Netherlands’.

Particular topics of discussion included tackling the problem of the lack of facilitation by the national government  and the decrease of EU subsidy availability in the area of innovation. The conclusions indicated that belonging to the top sectors is an art in itself. Similarly, gaining support from these sectors is equally challenging. The essence lies in finding a niche, which implies finding creative solutions.”

Structuring and organizing global support systems

On the 25th and 26th of February 'Innovation across Borders', a conference for small and medium enterprises was held in Toronto, Canada. The Technopolicy Network was invited to organize a half-day program.

This event was a joint effort of the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) and MaRS Discovery District in cooperation with the Technopolicy Network. The audience consisted of 300 SME’s.

The main topics for this conference were ‘Structuring and organizing of global support systems’ and ‘Gaining and defining complementary advantages for innovation partners’. Key collaborations between Transatlantic partners, East-West partners and partners in developing countries were discussed. The perspective was from the level of the Incubators, as well as Regional and Supranational levels.

Click here to view the part of the program that was organized by The Technopolicy Network.

For more information please contact us at info@technopolicy.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or go to innovationacrossborders.marsdd.com

Innovation Procurement in North America and Europe

On the 20th and 21st of January 2011, The 2nd International expert meeting on Small Business Innovation Research was held in the The Hague, The Netherlands.

Ever since the launching of the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) in the 1982 in the United States, innovation procurement through stimulation of small businesses has proven a highly efficient concept for stimulating innovation and economic growth. Often quoted success stories include Qualcomm (16 000 employees, US$ 60 billion market capitalization) and Symantec (17 000 employees, US$ 13 billion market capitalization). In Europe, several countries have taken the example of the United States establishing similar programs, such as SBRI in the United Kingdom, Forska & Väx in Sweden and SBIR in the Netherlands. On the European level structures for pre-commercial procurement have been put into place. Currently, the European Commission is looking into options for a catalytic form of innovation procurement. This event brought the latest insights on innovation procurement through SBIR and Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) and offerred participants the opportunity to discuss future EU collaboration structures with their peers from EU member states and the European Commission.

Goals of the expert meeting:

• Exchange experiences, best practices and disseminate latest results on
o running programs and projects on innovation procurement
o how to create a strong and solid Innovation Union
• Keep momentum for an European scheme for innovation procurement
• Brainstorm on future EU innovation procurement programs and broader international collaborations structures
• Influence the outcome of the EU feasibility study towards an European SBIR program
• Partnering with other member states to define bi–, tri- or multilateral European pilot projects on innovation procurement to jointly shape new EU research and innovation policies on innovation procurement.